


this golden land

by Val Mora (valmora)



Series: nice jewish boyfriends [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Jewish Character, M/M, Sarah-centric - Freeform, nice jewish boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 06:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4468814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She takes a ship to New York in 1904, after the boycott in Limerick. It's not bad, here, but well, it's not so far from boycotts to riots, in the end. Her family wasn't always called Leahy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this golden land

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always in 'nice Jewish boyfriends' fics to [Pargoletta](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/profile), without whose advice I couldn't write these.
> 
> The title is a loose translation of _di goldene medine_ , a common Yiddish-language way of referring to aspirations regarding immigration to the United States in and loosely around the turn of the century.
> 
> There really were anti-Semitic boycotts against the (very very small) Limerick Jewish community, though I prefer Sarah to have been from Dublin, where the largest Jewish community was.
> 
> I deliberately don't say the name, but realistically speaking this Joseph would have worked for _Forverts_.

She takes a ship to New York in 1904, after the boycott in Limerick. It's not bad, here, but well, it's not so far from boycotts to riots, in the end. Her family wasn't always called Leahy.

 

Joseph Rogers wasn't always called that, either, and he has a sweet smile and a warm voice, and he holds her thin wrists between his pin-pricked ink-stained fingers like she's precious.

She's always been proud of her wrists, and she's proud of him, too, the way he looks for truth for those pieces for a Yiddish newspaper he writes. He wants justice, and she knows enough to know he'll never really have it but that the fight is worth fighting. She wants to fight it with him, and isn't that something. 

 

There's nothing worth fighting for in this war, and he goes anyway, because there's no escaping it. She only has him back long enough, with his weakened lungs and his shadowed eyes and his trembling, for their son to find his way to them in the cradle of her body in the marriage bed.

They're like peas in a pod, her husband and her boy, and then there's no comparing them, with Joseph in the ground unchanging and too-young.

At least he came home, she supposes. So many are still left in France, forgotten lost things. 

 

They called him Steven, so he could blend in and never worry about the words that would follow his name, and then Grant, for Ulysses, who won an earlier war. If there were things she wanted Steven to inherit from his father, the urge towards justice would have been one, but she'd have preferred if it were tempered. By anything. 

Physical illness just, she knows, makes him readier to fight when he can. She doesn't know where he got it. Maybe it's the American air, or hearing Yiddish all around him that Sarah doesn't speak, or the roar of history bearing down. He would face giants just because it was right, and not even bother with a slingshot. Her little boy, her beautiful son, who draws and draws and draws.

 

He brings home a boy, one day, the both of them bruised and smiling, and giggling, Jamie's hair dark and wavy against Steve's fair, and playing together high-voiced and brave. She learns quickly to love Jamie Barnes, who's as brave as her son, though not as foolish, and who doesn't keep away even the more he learns of Steve's illnesses.

 

George Barnes shed his old name into the Atlantic except in his native tongue, and anyway, he is the kind of man to whom the best name he could wear is _Papa_. He does not speak his mother's tongue to his son, fruitlessly – Bucky goes too still when his name is mentioned between his parents. 

(Mary Barnes is at once proud of him for learning it: _This, my little boy, what a son, a mensch, a good Jew_ – and worried for him, _What if he's not safe with all our people's words on his tongue,_ but that is the lot of a mother.)

For all that she never taught Steve anything but English, Sarah finds the two of them curled up together reading Joseph's old paper in new issues anyway, and to that what can she do but bring out the clippings she kept, the ones with Joseph's name on them, the name he would not say except among his own people, in this language no Gentile would ever read?

 

There were hopes for Bucky: he's a handsome boy, a good student, and very charming. If he hadn't taken after his father's looks so much – and didn't spend his time doing errands for the reporters at a Yiddish-language newspaper – he could have passed for a Gentile, and gotten ahead in the world in the way his parents had wanted.

Sarah herself has, rather, wanted Steve to be happy. It seems more probable than success, with his bad ear and his color-blindness and his health, and his tendency toward – well, there is no kind way to say it: he is homosexual. She had thought so, before, but when he was seven, when he brought Bucky home, he might as well have kissed his own heart in farewell before setting it in Bucky's outstretched hands.

At least there is no disappointing her by working at the paper. It puts strength in his voice and his shoulders, gives him confidence. To be part of letting truth into the world. Like father, like son. 

The money isn't amiss, either.

 

She drinks tea sometimes with Mary, when the men are at services. Mary has a quick smile and a sharp sense of humor. Sarah's glad not to be alone in that. 

( _I want no more children,_ Mary said, after Alice, _three girls is enough and a son to be proud of I have already, and the money, you know._ Sarah had had no need of it herself, with wanting children with Joseph and then widowhood, but she could help Mary, and did.)

Mary always bakes enough bread on Friday for both of them. Sarah's grateful, even if they all know that she doesn't keep the Sabbath more often than not: when the choice is rent or rest, that is no choice at all. 

Mary's a friend, a good one. An anchor. Sarah's not afraid to leave her boy in Mary's house.

( _I'll take care of him_ , Mary promises, holding her hand, when Sarah is still well enough for visitors. _Like he was my son._ )

 

It's very quiet, and the sun is shining. Steve holds her hand tight enough to bruise. 

It's too hard to breathe. She tries, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like that I write Steve and Bucky as queer, socialist, and Jewish, and wish to contribute to the newsletter, you might want to check out my [tumblr](http://val-mora.tumblr.com).


End file.
